1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

a good moral standard to be observed. by
their offspring, yet there is no good reason
to' expect it unless parents themselves conform
to proper moral standards. When
parents condone falsehood, their children
have every reason to believe 'it is acceptable
social procedure to lie. When mother
or father takes junior to the movies or
for a bus ride and he is told not to give
his honest age but is advised to shade the
truth a little so that he may qualify for
a lower admission or a lower fare, are they
not undermining the moral fiber of the
child? When a proud father hurries his
children to Sunday school, supposedly to
teach them proper values, but on the way
tells them to look out for a policeman be·
cause he is going to speed, is he not de·
stroying moral values? When big brother
comes home and says in the hearing of
young ones, "Those crummy cops. They've
got nothing better to do than write traf·
fie tickets," is he not weakening the child's
respect for law and order? When an eight.
year-old boy returned a dollar to a little
schoolgirl who had lost it, his father beat
him with a belt and a rope for doing so.
(The Toronto, Canada, Telegram, September
17, 1963) How can children reared in
such atmosphere grow up to be moral, decent
men and women?
When parents lie, will children not
know? When parents cheat, fight, swear
and get drunk, will their behavior not
influence the youngsters? When father
comes home and brags about how he got
the best of a customer in a dishonest way,
will the child not be wrongly impressed?
When mother boasts about how she cheat·
ed the supermarket out of a bar of soap,
will her child not be tempted to try it?
When parents search for loopholes and
ways to evade tax laws, are they not teaching
the little ones that it is right to cheat?
When father pads the expense account,
mother takes home silverware from a
10
restaurant, brother pilfers from his employer,
is there any reason to believe that
a child exposed to all this is going to be
different? The divine rule is that we reap
what we sow.
Blame Must Be Shared
However, the parents are not the sale
sowers of bad seed or the only reapers.
The fact remains that there are many
good parents whose children have become
delinquent. Why so? Presiding Judge William
B. McKesson of the Juvenile Department
of the Superior Court of Los Angeles
County, California, explains: "Youth follow
example, and if the parents set an example
of antisocial or indifferent attitude
for the rights of their neighbors, children
may reasonably be expected to follow the
same course." However, he points out,
there are other factors that are influential,
such as community environment, emotional
instability, poor companionship,
overcrowded housing. His conclusion was
that the delinquency problem is not so
much an improper youth as it is an improper
home and bad adult environment.
Such unpleasant adult association does
not necessarily have to be in person. Chil·
dren can become contaminated with it by
the various means of communication, such
as radio, television and the movies. Since
children do ape adults, they will also imi·
tate their delinquent ways. In their immaturity
of judgment youngsters often
fail to discriminate between fact and fiction,
which fact often victimizes them to
a life of crime and corruption before they
are aware of it. For example, a thirteen·
year-old boy stabbed his widowed mother
to death with a bread knife. He told police
that he got the "urge to kill mother while'
watching some goofy movie" on television.
An adult-produced program sold him the
overpowering wicked idea and with it he
murdered his mother. Now, was the boy
AWAKE!